Rock Crown nominees get no invitation for award ceremony
ury Tsybin, the founder of the rock award ceremony, says that he and the organizers have auditioned around 140 bands and those short-listed should actually “be grateful”. If the artistes don’t know about their nominations, this is their problem, according to Tsybin.
“Why do we have to notify (them)? Don’t they have the internet? All the nominations have been posted. Let then open the event’s web site and take a look. I don’t have the final results yet. I will know the results tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. We will immediately call those who will be awarded. All of them will be present at the event,” he said.
It appears that only those who will get awards will be invited to the ceremony. Those who were just nominated, we’ll have to pay in order to attend the event.
To crosscheck the situation, we talked to Zmitser Haurylin, the leader of Ban-Zhvirba band which compete for a crown in the Traditions and Present nomination, in order to find out if he was invited to the ceremony.
Syarhey Budkin, one of the event organizers, could tell Zmitser anything for sure.
“He asked me to call him tomorrow. But he said: “No more seats”. Apparently, that’s the way they do it… This is not the main nomination, so they don’t even notify anyone”, Zmitser said.
The European Radio for Belarus recalls the last year’s Rock Coronation when Ur’ia band won in the Traditions and Present nomination. Back then, nobody rose from the seats in order to pick the prize.
We decided to find our whether the organizers had forgotten to notify the band’s frontman, Yury Vydronak, and whether he eventually collected his crown.
“We received a phone call two months ahead of the event and were told that we were going to receive something. I asked them to give us a call on the eve of the event, because I was not in Minsk at the time of the call. Two hours before the Coronation, I was called and told: “Come, the crowns will be handed over soon”. I asked them to provide us with transport, because I would not make it within 2 hours without a car. They said: “Ok!” That was the end of the story”, Vydronak recalls.
Yury added that he did not collect his crown, because he has no idea where he has to go to do it. This is not the first case in the history of the Rock Coronation.
The most scandalous case occurred in 2001 when bouncers would not allow Aliaksei Shadzko to enter the ceremony. This is how journalist Syarhey Malinouski reported about the Rock Coronation’2001:
“The smell of a madhouse hovered in the Minsk Concert Hall hours before the beginning of the ceremony. Security guards were not allowing some of the concert participants to enter the hall. Rock queen Veranika Kruglova somehow squeezed her way through the tough shoulders of the bouncers. In fact, he had specially arrived from Berlin to attend the ceremony. In the lobby, Veranika pinned a shiny strip on her forehead and stated that this was her invitation.”
Aliaksei Shydzko was not recognized by the security, either. The main contender would not try to prove his identity and simply left the place. “No person – no crown”. It seems that was the criteria how the organizers were picking the winner”.
The Rock Coronation’2007 will take place on February 29 in the Minsk Concert Hall.
Perhaps, it makes sense to do there at least in order to watch how nominees will be turned away from the main music award ceremony.
